On Gladys Yang’s Translation Of A Small Town Called Hibiscus From The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

Functional translation theories are among the most influential translation theories in the world with Skopos theory as the core theory.And as a break with the traditional concept of equivalence,Skopos theory holds that translation is a kind of purposeful cross-cultural human activity,and any translation process is determined by the intended function or skopos of the translation,that is,"the end justifies the means"(Nord,2001:27-29).If the intended function of the target text is different from that of the source text,the translation standard will be the adequacy for the target text’s intended function achieved instead of realizing the equivalence between the target text and the source text.In other words,the translator is allowed to make some adaptations to the source text according to the situation in which the target text is to function so as to achieve the intended function of the translation.Thus,among the three main rules of Skopos theory,that is,the Skopos rule,the Coherence rule and the Fidelity rule,the Skopos rule is the top-ranking rule for any translation process.The Skopos theory has helped broaden the scope of translation study which used to be confined to the achievement of the equivalence between the target text and the source text.Besides,it also provides another theoretical basis for translation practices.However,Skopos theory has been often applied to pragmatic translation studies since its first appearance with lots of disputes over its application to literary translationAs the representative work of Gu Hua,an outstanding and famous writer in contemporary China,Furong Zhen has gained praise since its first publication in China in 1981 and won the first Mao Dun Literary Award in 1982,which proves its literary value.In 1983,entitled A Small Town Called Hibiscus,the English version of the novel translated by Gladys Yang was published and sold in the west.And it turned out that the English version of the novel has been also very popular among western readers.Besides,the version has always been regarded as one of the faithful and readable translations in the history of Chinese literary translation.In addition,based on the English translation of Furong Zhen done by Gladys Yang,the novel has been also translated into and published in many other foreign languages,such as French,Japanese,German,Russian and so on.Thus,taking A Small Town Called Hibiscus translated by Gladys Yang as the example,this thesis attempts to combine the Skopos theory with the literary translation practice to explore whether the theory can be applied to literary translation or not by analyzing the specific application of its three main rules in the translation process of Furong Zhen through studies on the examples from the English and Chinese versions of the novel.